470 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ARMY
the diseases normally in such theatres more destructive than the
enemy, was the most novel and interesting of the war, and a fitting
elimax to the glorious history of the Indian army, in which it was
unhappily to be the final episode. In this second World War,
indeed, Indian soldiers, every one of them, it must be remembered,
a volunteer, proved themselves as good as any in Europe, or
Asia; and the military strength of the British Commonwealth
of Nations has been grievously reduced by the loss of these
excellent troops at the moment when they had reached the
peak of their efficiency and fame. In the arduous and little known
operations in New Guinea and the other south-west Pacific islands
Australian generals and troops fought their first independent
campaigns, and though inevitably less in the public eye than their
predecessors of 1914-18, amply proved their possession of admir-
able military qualities. The British Commonwealth of Nations
had, in fact, every reason for satisfaction with the manner in which
its eastern members fulfilled the roles allotted to them in the
Allies' war strategy.
XI. THE RETURN TO PEACE
The demobilisation of Britain's war-time forces after the termina-
tion of hostilities in the Far East was based on a scheme better
thought out and more thoroughly explained beforehand than the
hurriedly extemporised one which had proved so ineffective in
1919, and was carried out with smoothness and efficiency. Within
two years their strength had been cut down from two and three-
quarter million men to little over a million, and by the summer of
1948 to some 700,000 only, a figure which included over 150,000
Colonial and Gurkha troops and only little over half a million British
troops. National military service, retained after the war as the
permanent basis of our armed forces, was estimated to give an
average of 100,000 recruits a year to the army; but there were,
as was only to be expected, difficulties in enlisting the permanent
cadres of officers and long-service personnel to form the necessary
framework in which they could be received and embodied. The
revived Territorial Army was to be recruited from personnel who
.had finished their Regular Army service, and the Women's Auxiliary
Territorial Service, rechristened the Women's Royal Army Corps
was continued as a permanent part of our post-war military system.
In 1948 our military commitments were still considerably larger
than in 1918, and had not been liquidated as rapidly as had been
hoped. The occupation of the British zone of Germany was accepted
as a long-term obligation, but there were still small British forces in
Austria, the Trieste area, and Greece; while outside Europe, though
there were no longer any British troops in Japan, we still had some